


what made you hesitate

by toxica939



Series: who we were when [3]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 00:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15674370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toxica939/pseuds/toxica939
Summary: As if Paddy walking in on him with his dick in Aaron's mouth isn't mortifying enough, he doesn't even fuck straight back off, stands there stuttering in the doorway with a hand over his eyes, telling Robert his tea's ready.





	what made you hesitate

Chas lets him stay for a week, Robert assumes that's because it takes her that long to guilt trip Paddy into taking pity on him and offering up his spare room.

Robert hasn't spent a great deal of time in Paddy's company since Chas ditched him a couple of years ago and she and Aaron moved into the pub, but he was basically Aaron's dad for a while there, and Robert thinks there's a nice sort of poetry to him ending up back where it all started – in Aaron's old room at Smithy.

The room is bland; magnolia walls and the same dark carpet that's on the stairs. The ceilings are low and the place creaks when the wind gets up. It's just like Robert remembers it.

Aaron throws himself down on the bed, must have worn himself out huffing and puffing about shifting all of Robert's gear _again_.

“Go and get us a coke, will you?”

Robert, who won't be getting lazy arses anything any time soon, busies himself counting the coat hangers in the tiny wardrobe and working out which drawer to use for what. There's a shelf over the desk near the window, big enough for the few books he packed. Aaron used to have a lava lamp and a tin of old World Cup stickers on it, because Aaron was a loser.

Aaron kicks him half-heartedly when Robert passes the end of the bed, holds his feet out hopefully. Robert yanks his trainers off for him with a put upon sigh, so Aaron can shuffle himself back into the pillows.

“I've not been up here for ages,” Aaron says, folding his arms behind his head. “It even sort of smells the same.”

“What, like your dirty socks?”

Aaron pulls a face, waves his foot in Robert's direction menacingly.

Robert glances out the window, he can see right down Main Street, the corner of the cafe and Aaron's window above the pub. He's never lived in the village before, never actually had anything to look at but rolling fields and the odd lost sheep. He can see Pearl on her way to the bus stop, wrapped in a red scarf, and wonders where she's going.

He turns to rest his bum on the desk. “Are you sure Paddy doesn't mind me being here?”

“Come here,” Aaron reaches out, makes grabby hands at him until Robert lets himself be drawn down on to the bed. “He wouldn't have offered if he did,” Aaron tells him.

“I bet your mum can be pretty persuasive.”

“Don't be a dickhead, I'm trying to be nice to you.”

“Oh, sorry, go on.”

Aaron huffs at him. “Just because you don't think you're worth bothering with doesn't mean the rest of us do, alright? Paddy wants to help you, will you just let him? Please, Rob.”

Robert rolls onto his back. “I'm trying, I promise.”

And he is. It's difficult to make his peace with being a charity case, but he is trying.

Still, if Aaron's in a giving mood.

“I can think of something you could do to help me out,” he says, pinches the tip of his tongue between his teeth when he grins.

He doesn't actually expect Aaron to go for it, so the hand on his belt buckle is a pleasant surprise. Second only to the gut-clenching heat of Aaron's mouth sinking down over him.

Robert curls his hands in his own hair, eyes closing, thighs spreading; settles in to enjoy being worshipped.

So obviously that's when the door bangs open.

As if Paddy walking in on him with his dick in Aaron's mouth isn't mortifying enough, he doesn't even fuck straight back off, stands there stuttering in the doorway with a hand over his eyes, telling Robert his tea's ready.

Aaron, who rolled right off the bed and on to the floor in his panic, tells him they'll be down in a minute, and Paddy feels his way back out to the stairs.

There's a sort of stunned silence.

Robert looks down at himself, cock on show, still wet and making a valiant attempt to stay hard.

He fumbles a hand down the side of the bed, until he's got his palm spread over Aaron's face. “Get back up here.”

Aaron slaps his hand away, pops up still red in the face and huffing. He glances down. “Seriously? You don't think that killed the mood a bit?”

Robert shakes his head, rolling to press a kiss to the side of Aaron's unimpressed face. Aaron can't resist him, wouldn't be turning his head to fit their mouths together if he could.

They kiss until Paddy shouts them down for tea again, from the bottom of the stairs this time, thank god.

Robert never does get off, mind. Aaron's annoying like that.

:::

They decamp back to Aaron's after Paddy's rubbish fry up, Robert not quite wanting to test his welcome just yet.

Aaron's bed is the same unmade mess they left it in this morning, so it's easy to kick their jeans off and climb back in.

After, when Aaron's suitably contrite about leaving Robert hanging, courtesy of the fantastic blow job Robert just gave him, he lets Aaron wank him off, forehead pressed to Aaron's shoulder, makes a mess between their bellies and flops down into it anyway, head on Aaron's chest.

Aaron puts an arm around him, leans his cheek on Robert's hair. “I can't believe you're actually moving in with Paddy. There's no way he's been prepared for this properly, he's already losing his hair.”

“Fuck off. I'm an excellent housemate, I can cook, I'm clean – unlike some – and it's not like I'm going to be bringing strangers back every night.”

Aaron hmms. “Bet you can't wait for cozy nights in with his Robot Wars boxset.”

“Sorry, what?”

Robert's head bounces when Aaron laughs. “I'm messing with you, Paddy's alright”

“I know,” Robert says, leans up on an elbow to add, “I'd still rather be here though. In your bed,” just in case that wasn't clear.

Aaron's eyeroll is fond, and so is the way his hand rubs up and down Robert's back. “Obviously.”

Robert nods, gives him a little kiss. “But this could be good. D'you think?”

Aaron's fingers curl, pull him in for another kiss, longer than the last but just as soft. “I reckon so, yeah. I probably wouldn't show him your knob again though, just to be safe.”

And really, he deserves to end up on the floor again for that.

:::

He and Paddy rub along just fine, as it turn out.

Robert gets home from school, does his homework like the sort of square who definitely isn't going to be able to afford to go to uni any more, and makes them something for tea.

Paddy will wander in from the surgery, following his nose, he says, and loiter at the kitchen table until Robert's plating up. It's sort of like being part of a very dysfunctional, sexless marriage.

Paddy snorts water out his nose when Robert says as much. “Don't let Aaron hear you say that.”

“Aaron and I have an understanding,” Robert tells him, chin in his hand. He gives him the eye just to see what he'll do.

What he does is turn puce, start spluttering.

Robert manages to keep a straight face for another thirty seconds before he cracks. “Paddy, I'm joking. I'm very, very taken, and you are very, very not my type.”

Paddy sags back in his chair, hand over his heart. “Can we make an agreement that you are never, and I mean never, to do that to me again?”

“Deal,” Robert agrees. “If you're washing up.”

“I think I can manage that.”

“I am grateful, you know? For you letting me stay here. I know I'm not your problem,” he has to look away to get the words out, but he manages it.

Paddy's hand is heavy on his shoulder when he rises. “You've been my problem since you were six years old and you filled my shoes with shaving foam,” he says, and the memory makes them both smile. “You don't need to grateful, just be happy.”

Robert nods. He's working on it.

He's even started to enjoy Robot Wars.

:::

Andy collars him after double maths. Robert tries walking away but there's nowhere to go at this end of the corridor except the bogs and Andy follows him in.

Robert folds his arms, there's a part of him that's itching for a fight, always is around Andy. It's not a part of him he likes very much. “Careful, people will talk,” Robert says.

Robert can't remember the last time Andy looked at him with anything other than disappointment, so his face now is nothing new. “Don't be like that. I need to talk to you.”

“I think you've done enough talking, don't you.”

“Rob, listen. I'm so sorry, I never meant for any of this. Please, will you just come home? Vic misses you.”

That's a low blow, so Robert ignores him, turns round to take a piss instead.

He hears Andy sigh, can see his crumpled forehead in the row of mirrors over the sinks. “He's sorry.”

Robert shakes, zips up. “If he was sorry,” he says, refastening his belt, “He'd have said.”

“Chas barred him from the pub.”

Robert didn't know that, but there's no harm in letting Andy think he did. “If he was sorry, he'd know that I'm not staying there any more.”

“She's kicked you out?”

And the thing is, the frustrating, stupid thing, is that Andy seems genuinely concerned. Like Robert on the street would be bad thing. It's a shame he didn't feel like that when Dad was kicking the shit out of him on the living room floor.

“That was you lot remember? My _family_ ,” he sighs. “Just go away Andy. You've wanted me gone for years, just enjoy it.”

“I didn't want this.”

“You _caused_ this.”

“You can blame me for a lot of things, Rob, but not this.”

“Well you didn't stop it, did you? How long did it take you to drag him off me again?”

Andy's a big guy, all shoulders and chest, like a barrel. Robert's never seen him shrink before. “I didn't know what was happening. I was scared.”

It looks like that admission cost him something, and Robert's not a good enough person to feel bad about it.

He does nod though. “So was I. Every day, for years. I'm going to live like that any more. It's not fair.”

Andy doesn't try to stop him when Robert steps around him to get a hand on the door. “Look after Vic, yeah? Tell her I'll see her soon.”

It wont be the end of it, not by a long shot, but it'll do for now.

:::

Paddy's working late so Robert gets tea with Aaron at the pub. Chas lets them take up the far end of the bar, keeps them in enough free lemonade that Aaron belches after every fourth bite of his burger. It's revolting.

Robert, who isn't an animal, eats his pie like a gentleman, but spends most of the meal trying to eavesdrop on the couple having an argument in the booth behind them.

Aaron flicks him a look. “If you lean back any further you're going to fall off your chair.”

Aaron's got a mouthful of half-chewed food, so Robert isn't about to start taking advice from him. “I want to know what happened with the teacher.”

“He was shagging her behind her back, wasn't he,” Aaron tells him. “He had her in here last week.”

Seeing as it doesn't seem like the woman's about to swill her cheating husband any time soon, Robert gives Aaron his full attention, steals a chip to dip in his gravy since he's finished his own. “Anything on this weekend?”

“Debbie's birthday, innit. Party round theirs if you fancy it?”

Aaron never brings up that time Robert spent a month fucking Debbie to stop Andy doing it first. So Robert doesn't really want to either.

Still. “She's not exactly my biggest fan,” is the most polite way he can think to put it. In reality, she'd thrown cow shit at him and Heather Connerty when she'd caught them snogging in one of the barns.

Aaron shrugs. “Well you're with me now. Honorary Dingle.”

He's got that teasing grin on, but his eyes are serious. Robert curls a hand over his knee. “If you're sure.”

“I'm sure. Anyone with a problem can go through me first, alright?”

The kiss Aaron gives him is quick, ketchup flavoured.

No one turns to look at them, the room does not go silent, nothing much happens at all.

Robert lets his heart race in his chest, kisses Aaron one more time, just to do it.

It feels good.

 


End file.
